


it gives a lovely light

by Jenny_Islander



Category: Trollhunters (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone's Happy/Nobody Made Stupid Decisions, F/M, Middle-aged dorks in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-04 05:43:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13357743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenny_Islander/pseuds/Jenny_Islander
Summary: A remix of Ler's wonderful AU, which I really really want to see more of.  Also my first posted story at AO3.  I'll fix whatever technical bits I didn't get right...eventually.  :/  1/17: Edited because I wrote in a white-hot fervor and just sorta threw the first draft on out there.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [and so the darkness knew my name](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9946388) by [Ler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ler/pseuds/Ler). 



Barbara is a creature of water and fire: fire she carries within her, a Heartstone in every particle of her body, and singing among the fires the sea. It did not take him long beneath the sun to learn that humans only seem fragile. They change, endlessly, like water, like fire, and in that is their strength.

But fire burns out. Water dries away. Forty years, perhaps, and he'll lose her. He has been careful not to waste a day since he began to understand how much it's going to hurt.

He has also been careful not to let her see his other form. She has ridden the waves of strangeness that have been crashing into her life nonstop ever since Jim found the amulet, but everyone has their limit. He thinks of uncanny valleys, of devils in old woodcuts. 

And then, one evening in her bed, he thinks, _To hell with it._ The first time she saw his eyes change she said, "Oh," and smiled, and went on unbuckling his belt. Perhaps she hasn't asked to see him because he hasn't offered. So why not--? 

He's been a dealmaker for so long, though, that he can't resist the chance to sweeten the pot. A little pleasure might carry her over the next wave of strangeness (and a tiny corner of his mind whispers _A chance to touch her with everything I am, before she meets the wave she can't ride_ ). "Close your eyes," he says softly.

"Wouldn't that be counter-productive?" she responds with a quizzical expression. Behind the closed door of her room, she isn't shy.

"Just please do?"

She looks at him narrowly, then relaxes. "All right, sure." After a moment she lies back with a sigh and closes her eyes. "What next?"

He gently guides her hands up to the headboard. "No touching unless I tell you to."

"Walter--"

"Please."

"What are you trying to do, Walter?"

"I just want to show you something very important." And before he can lose his nerve, he changes.

He can feel her pulse beating against his thumbs where he holds her wrists (so gently, he is so, so much stronger, he must--) like the distant impact of the sea felt through stone, like fire throbbing in a furnace. Barbara gasps. He nuzzles her hair, silk dragging across his skin, and kisses her--her little shell-ear, her soft smiling cheek--he pauses instead of kissing her mouth and looks again; she really is smiling, so he feels himself smiling too. "Relax," he purrs, "I won't bite."

"You know that is not a problem," she purrs back (does he ever!). When he kisses the delicate line of her jaw, she murmurs his human name and touches him regardless. "Oh!" she squeaks--and pulls him higher over her body, by his horns. 

She's looking at him. Studying him. He can't help grimacing, waiting for her reaction. There's no pause he might use to put on some other face: she acts, he reacts, compass needle to her lodestone. He feels even more naked than he was just a moment ago. He can't hide--anything. Not from her. Not anymore.

She grins at him and bites her lip (oh delicious, he wants to kiss and kiss). "Watch me take a bull by the horns."

He groans, because that is _so Barbara,_ and kisses her anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

He lets her explore. She combs her fingers through his hair, marveling at the way the ends of his curls prickle at her fingertips. She finds that one spot (how?) at the base of each horn that turns him speechlessly contented. She strokes his throat; he arches his neck to let her do as she likes. She pulls at him, wanting to fit skin to skin, but he resists, supporting himself on his elbows--"I'm heavy, darling," he tells her. She presses her palm, then her ear, to his chest. "You won't hear anything," he says. "Stone, remember?"

And then she's kissing him, and apparently he isn't heavy at all.

Her arms are under his cloak, her face nestled into his collarbone as she kisses and nibbles her way down--he can't think, forces his muddled brain into action and blurts, "Wait a moment," rolling aside to unpin the brooch and dump the cloak off the bed, knives rattling. Air against the bare skin of his back makes him uneasy--but he forgets, quickly, as Barbara purrs and laughs and presses her shockingly hot thighs on either side of his waist, pulling him down and in. He can't see her face in this position, but he can hear her frustrated growl when she discovers that he's still wearing his loincloth. Hot fingers slipping under--

\--and she's blinking at him, a little hurt, while he stands breathing heavily well away from the bed.

"Sorry." He's trembling and can't stop it. "I'm sorry. But we don't--we don't fit." Off her speechless stare, he adds helplessly, "I really did just want to show you I could still kiss you."

Oh stars, he's fucked it up. He gathers up his cloak, but his shaking fingers can't work the pin. "Hey," she says softly. She's close enough to touch him, how did that happen? Warm hand gently covering his own. "Hey, it's okay. Come back to bed...please? Just--just like this." Other hand on his chest, and she leans into him, trustingly, naked in his arms.

With murmured reassurance, and hands no lower than his heart, she coaxes him back into her bed. She folds a spare blanket into a thick pad for him so that he can lie on his side without a horn snagging in pillowcase or sheets. She doesn't ask him for anything more--just lies down next to him, naked and unafraid, and holds his hand. It's absurd: the seven-foot troll with his long green feet hanging off the end of the bed and the human woman who's tucked his curled hand, claws and all, beneath her chin, as if she were protecting a kitten. He can't stop looking at her. He can't bear to meet her eyes. If he loved her any more, he might crack apart. And he's fucking it up.

"Hang on," she says, and pads across the room to fuss with the blackout curtains, detouring to check the lock on the bedroom door. "Okay. If you want to change back, go ahead, but you can stay just like that if you want."

That's it. He's cracking apart.

Trolls don't weep; he holds her like a storm-tossed animal clinging to a rock and shivers and shivers, while she whispers, "It's okay, it's okay." Eventually the storm passes, and to his faint surprise he falls asleep.

He wakes alone. She spread a comforter over him sometime during the night; while he doesn't need it, he appreciates the kindness. The Sunday-morning sounds on the other side of the blackout curtains suggest that the day is well underway. There's a scent of muffins and coffee on the other side of the door as well (bless Jim). He changes forms, putting yesterday's clothes on for now, and breakfasts in Barbara's room. Then he picks out clean clothes from the drawer she set aside for him and pads down the hall in his sock feet. A quick shower later, and he feels less--peeled, less raw. 

Jim and Tobias are huddled over something involving a large stack of books at the dining table when he takes the tray to the kitchen. They exchange nods with him and go back to it. Barbara is running through a krav maga drill in the back yard. The heavy bag he hung for her is serving her well. He limbers up briefly and runs through his own rapier drills, with the practice dummy set high, so that its eyes are at troll height. Jim joins him for a little while, although most of what he does--not to mention what Tobias does--requires training in Trollmarket. Actually stabbing a troll through the eye hasn't crossed over from theory to practice, but one never knows.

He has begun to hope that Barbara will let what passed between them in the night go on down the wind. But when the boys have gone off to collect Claire and he's considering going home, she says, "We need to talk."


	3. Chapter 3

They go to her bedroom; Jim doesn't open her door without permission since Stricklander began staying overnight, so they'll be private there for as long as whatever this is may take. He doesn't want to think about what may be about to happen. But he won't run. 

He won't run.

She closes the door behind them, pushes the lock button with a final little snapping sound, dials the overhead light to a low rosy gloom, and says gently, "What happened last night?"

"I--" What did happen? Why did he--? "I--I don't know."

She just looks at him, but she's holding his hands in hers, so.

He takes a deep breath. "I wasn't--I didn't expect to. Er. React like that."

She is unnervingly good at expectant silence.

"I. Er. It wasn't. You didn't do anything wrong. It was my f--"

She lays her fingers softly against his lips. "Walter. You went from really into it, as far as I could tell, to practically against the wall in a split second. And for a minute I don't think you were even there, mentally. I know what that looks like to me. What does it look like to you?"

For a moment he has no idea what she's talking about. And then things he learned at teacher inservice, or actually re-learned in the vocabulary of a new century, snap into focus. "What? No! I'd remember." But, his treacherous brain informs him, there is at least a century that he doesn't remember. "I'd remember," he says less certainly. It doesn't--wouldn't he be certain? Know, even if the memories are gone (were taken)? Wouldn't it fall into place, in the hole where the first part of his life used to be? "I think...or rather I don't think, that--that was the case. But--" He's feeling his way along. Last night this all seemed so simple. How many times is he going to walk into the same trap? How many times is he going to stride blithely over a flimsy foundation of assumptions? "But, do you know, I've spent years in this form and not given it a second thought? I haven't spent more than a few hours at a time as a troll in...come to think of it, I can't remember when." He tries a smile, but it ends up crooked. "Looks like you ended up with a nervous virgin after all. Sorry."

"What?"

"I know this wasn't what you agreed to--"

"No, seriously, _what?_ " 

Oh hell, she's furious. And between him and the door. There is no way to get out of here that won't be awkward. "Barbara, I--"

"No, you listen to me, Walter--Stricklander--I don't care. I know what we agreed to. But that was _last year._ Before Jim got picked for this destiny that's hanging over his head, before I found out there were trolls living in our basement, before Bular came after us--oh for--do you think we're still friends with benefits?" She stares at him. "Oh, you _dipshit._ Change."

It takes a few fraught seconds for her words to sink in. He gulps and shifts forms.

"Lean over. You're like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar up there." And when he does so, she rises a little on her toes and presses her brow against his, like a troll with someone she loves. "You and nobody else," she says, her breath human-hot. "I'm not keeping you around just for the sex, you dummy. I'm not going to break up with you because you didn't blow my mind last night. Any form you choose, any pace you set, because I love you."

He is not going to lose his composure twice in twenty-four hours. Except that apparently he is. At least he has enough presence of mind to change back so that Barbara doesn't have a distraught knife-laden troll leaning on her. They end up on the bed again, sweat and all--on top of the coverlet; she isn't house proud, but she's averse to doing more laundry than she must--and when he's managed to squeeze back the tears and moves to sit up, she says, "Stay like this? I need a hug."

He can do that. He can feel her soft hair against his cheek and tangle their feet together. "Barbara...obviously I have no idea what I'm doing. But if you're willing to put up with me, then--you and nobody else. I. Yes."

She snuggles closer. "For a guy who doesn't know what he's doing, you're doing a pretty good job. Jim almost called you Dad the other day, when he was telling me what you were doing in Hero's Forge."

"Really?" he (somewhat!) squeaks.

She leans back to study his astonished grin, kisses the bridge of his nose, and tucks back into his embrace. "Really," she says against his collarbone. "And, y'know, after a long shift? The days I know you'll be there when I walk in are the best. And you know what makes me laugh and go looking for stuff I like to read, and I love your sense of humor, and you listen and take me seriously, and just sitting on a couch with you is sometimes the best part of my day? Walter, you've been loving me for months."

He has? Well. So he has. He has to kiss her for that--"Walter, the kids'll be back any minute!" And then, of course, she has to kiss him.

"Not much like the first time I was in love," he says to the ceiling a little while later. "But I suppose I wasn't, not really."

"Oh?"

Talking about it is strange. It's easy, because it's Barbara, and it's hard, because he's never spoken of this to anyone, ever. "I was in my early twenties, I suppose, in human terms. Her name was Anna Roth, and she lived in Köln. She was--these days she would be picked for character parts, but then? Then she was a beauty. Golden hair--it was the fashion for women to wear a sort of cap that came down over the ears, but let their hair trail out from beneath it, and hers went halfway down her back. Broad smooth forehead. Perfect sapphire eyes. Pale and rosy in just the right arrangement, with a delicate little chin. I was one of any number of young fools who wrote bad poetry about her. But I was serious. Or I thought I was. I actually pressed my suit."

"What happened?" she murmurs.

He realizes, belatedly, that this may not be the best topic for this moment. Oh well. "She laughed at me and sent me away. I persisted; she had three very large brothers, and she had them come and talk to me. I, er, cashed my reality check just in time. I was a nobody. Posing as a university student from Stendal. She had her future to think of, and in any case if her family had tried to send letters to mine, they'd have soon found out that nobody had heard of me in Stendal. And if the Order had found out--" He shakes his head.

"And then?"

"Then I shut myself up in my little garret and wrote more bad poetry, which I burned, so there isn't any chance of it turning up in somebody's attic, thank goodness; and she married somebody in her own class and had four bouncing children. Got childbed fever with the last one, or so I heard. I'd moved on by then." He reflects. "I didn't actually know anything about her, except that she was lovely and never let her temper show, even in her eyes. And she never put a foot wrong, even with all those callow young men trailing after her like cats after a dairymaid whenever she went to church or to the shops."

"Well, first love can be like that. Doesn't mean it couldn't hurt you at the time, though."

"Oh, I thought I'd crack. Swore it off after that." He nuzzles her hair again. "This is...this is walking into a cavern and looking up and seeing stars. I'm not sure where I am. Please bear with me?"

Just then there are footsteps in the hall. They stop outside Barbara's bedroom door; he can hear the children muttering to one another. Tobias's voice rises above the others--"nooner"--the other two hiss him down, Jim with pained outrage, Claire with half-stifled hilarity. The footsteps retreat.

"And on that note," Barbara says, meeting his gaze with half-stifled hilarity of her own, "what do you think about moving in?"


End file.
